It’s been a busy first half for our Customer Success representatives, who are in charge of signing new companies up every month. They thoroughly guide every new client through our innovative real-time leaderboards and enterprise gamification processes.

Whether it was the Sales or Customer Service crew of a recognized Sports team, a Professional Service, or an IT shop, we have come to the conclusion that they were all facing similar challenges before knowing about Hurrah!. Although some of them were already tracking their team’s performance by sketching a set of business goals on a whiteboard or online spreadsheet, their method was very basic and old-fashioned. Hurrah! has been specifically designed to automate and improve such process. It minimizes the hassle while providing an extremely friendly way for employees to stay tuned with their goals, as well as keeping them motivated over time while driving CRM adoption and boosting performance.

One key aspect of our successful leaderboard and performance monitoring tool, is the ability to pull data in real time from the existing CRM system. Over the past couple of years, several of our fellow partners successfully implemented Hurrah!, and soon they came back to us with a feature request that caught our attention: the ability to pull some specific data from other data sources, since the information was not always available within Dynamics CRM.

Our product development team took this challenge and isolated themselves from the external world for a few months. Today, after gaining some pounds, and performing lots of testing, we are proud to announce the results:

Hurrah! Leaderboards is now able to connect with the most popular enterprise database systems, and even Excel sheets!

So, what does this mean for a Sales or Customer Service Manager?

Well, either as a fellow partner or as a Dynamics CRM enthusiast, you will not only experience the same level of connectivity you currently have with your favorite CRM, but also with other popular databases. Do you love our multi column chart slide but have some sales data stored in the Phone Systems and Call Center software? Now, you can mix it up with all that rich data stored somewhere else (Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2, and Excel, to name a few), and broadcast it right away on the TV screens. Do you want to congratulate and launch the big event based on some valuable data stored in an external system, either an ERP or a billing system? No problem!

Obviously, this also opens the door to non-Dynamics CRM teams, allowing Hurrah! to fit in more spaces. Eventually, it would also allow every organization who is willing to experience the excitement of live motivation, engagement, and success, without considering the system they use to store data and CRM activities.

We trust this feature opens a wide variety of possibilities, making the broadcast of valuable information a lot easier, regardless of its location.

Another feature we included in this new release, thanks to our customer’s feedback, is the Metric Customization Platform. Metrics are now easier to setup than ever, directly from the administration console (yes, the one that looks like PowerPoint™), just with some quick help from your IT guy and zero dependance on our implementation team.

Feeling excited, right? We encourage you to upgrade for free to the latest version of Hurrah! Enterprise as soon as possible, or ask for a Live Demo and see how it could easily plug into your non-Microsoft CRM system.

These days, it is not unusual to hear of companies using fantasy sport teams as part of their sales gamification strategy. Dividing a sales force up into ‘teams’ improves sales team performance and improves sales pipeline quality through better CRM use, but a new trend observed by CRM Gamified finds that sports organizations themselves are enthusiastically embracing gamification strategies for their own sales team organizations.

This is not surprising given the recent increase in sales for sporting events. The NBA alone set record attendance for the 2015-2016 season with over 21 million fans attending games and making a record for sellouts (723). With a need to manage large sales departments that are handling high volumes of ticket sales, gamification works particularly well with sports organizations to help sales teams benchmark performance, increase data reporting accuracy and increase sales.

While most sales trainings include a thorough onboarding process, they do little to ensure that reps will have an ongoing opportunity to advance their knowledge retention and selling skills. According to a recent white paper on the future of sales training by Sales Performance International, “without systematic, ongoing learning and reinforcement, approximately 50% of the learning content is not retained within five weeks, much less applied, and within 90 days, 84% of what was initially learned is lost.” This highlights the need for a gamification product that is not only user-friendly, but can continually be honing salespersons’ skills via the application of competition and engaging leaderboards.

The Hurrah! Leaderboard® by CRM Gamified is an example of this type of dynamic leaderboard that shares sales data from CRM and engages sales teams with game elements such as rankings, awards and recognition, all which can be tailored to the individual (custom alert songs, etc.). Further, when sales are made, details and custom sounds are displayed for everyone to see. These audio-visual cues serve to motivate the reps to make more sales and display accurate data. Meanwhile, lower sales performers are able to witness the best practices of higher sales makers and their corresponding revenue, which in turn, motivates them to increase their sales.

These elements of the Hurrah! Leaderboard make it a particularly compelling tool for sports organizations. The Dallas Cowboys, for example, are just one of many top sport leagues that have experienced success with the Hurrah! Leaderboard, especially appreciating the “live” recording and broadcasting of data via the Big Event alerts that the leaderboard utilizes. Using a set of pre-defined KPIs specific to the sports industry (Won Ticket Sales Opportunity, Won Renewal Ticket Cases, Total Full Season Revenue, Premium Pack Revenue to name a few examples), the Dallas Cowboys sales department chose the Hurrah! Leaderboard for its real time reporting and tracking features combined with the audio-visual cues for motivating the sales team. As PJ Pepa, CRM Manager at the Dallas Cowboys states, “when using gamification software, use the best technology available with Hurrah! CRM!”

Encouraging employees to adopt a new technology within any organization can be challenging. Significant time and money is invested into a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to be set up specifically to meet a company’s requirements. The CRM is a key sales tool for tracking potential and existing customers. It is crucial that data is entered accurately and in a timely manner in the CRM system. This data will be used in making key business decisions within the company.

An organization knows that in order to see the returns on their investment in a CRM system, a variety of measurements and ways to encourage and motivate the employees to use the system need to be in place. Some approaches to encourage and motivate an employee are more effective than others, but how is one supposed to choose which approach is the best.

CRMGamified has modernized an old approach by leveraging gamification mechanics and applying it to human behavior. Gamification is designed to overcome existing obstacles that prevent or hinder employees from adopting a new technology. It promotes human behaviors that will lead to increasing the quantity and quality of customer data.

Problem Statement

More than ever, companies are implementing CRM systems. The gathering of customer data can be a key deciding factor in a company’s initiatives and direction it takes in developing and selling its products. The data needs to be entered by employees who have customer facing roles accurately and in a timely manner.

Problems start when data is not being entered or it is not entered accurately. There are many reasons why a user does not enter the data. The following is a summary of some of the challenges a company has when trying to encourage an employee to adopt and use the CRM.

Data Entry

After a CRM system is implemented, data needs to be added to the system to create the reports required to facilitate decisions. If a user is asked to add data and they do not understand why this data is being entered or how it will be used to make corporate decisions, the data entry will get de-prioritized over other work that is perceived as more important.

Accuracy of the information

Data is being entered into the CRM system, but what is the quality of the data being inputted. Perhaps there is some uncertainty among the sales people as to the type of information that should be entered or the information is too general. When the time comes for a decision to be made about a customer, there may not be sufficient data to make an informed decision.

Lack of involvement of in the CRM project,

When the key users of the system are not involved in the initial stages of the CRM project, the CRM may not properly take into account the work processes in place. The CRM is supposed to facilitate work and decisions not hinder them. Certain decisions may have been made that the user may not understanding. The end result is resistance to using the CRM or feeling that the CRM creates more work for them by not incorporating their feedback into the project, a great way to get their buy in is from the start of the CRM implementation.

Regular cleanup of the data to remove redundancy

Poorly entered data could generate redundant data and create inaccuracies in the CRM reports. Data needs to be reviewed periodically to remove any redundant records. Regularly cleaning up the data ensures the quality of the data.

Training

Training is essential for the adoption of the CRM. If a user does not know how to use the CRM, the data will be entered incorrectly. Follow up training is necessary to cover any new or revised work processes. Users may feel attending the training not necessary and may want to focus their efforts on selling. This type of thinking impacts the quantity and quality of data.

There are many tactics that can be utilized to encourage and motivate employees to use a CRM system. This white paper explores the use of gamification as one tactic to motivate a user and improve the quality and quantity of data entry in a CRM system.”

The CRM Gamification Solution

The implementation of a recognition and reward system encourages and motivates employees to use the CRM system. Ultimately you want to reward and recognize desirable behaviors. Achievement and recognition are the top two motivation factors. These factors need to be in place for an employee to have satisfaction at work. The reward system can use points, badges, rankings, leaderboards, levels, missions, and real-time feedback to motivate and reward employees for their efforts.

What is Gamification

This is where the use of gamification tactics come in. Gamification is taking an activity that is perceived as dull and uninteresting and injecting some fun into it. Gamification uses game design techniques to motivate people to achieve their goals. It is about taking an application and applying game mechanics to make it engaging. It is used to reward users for their contributions.

Where to Apply Gamification in CRM

Gamification can be used to encourage behaviors that you want users to adopt. Include gamification in your sales methodology. For example, if a sales person makes a new contact, this person receives 1 point. Make a new contact in one of your target accounts, obtain 2 points. If a person makes x number of sales calls, this person receives three points.

Create some healthy competition by using a leaderboard. Post the names of sales people and their sales by highest sales first. The people with the lower sales numbers will want to catchup and even surpass the leader.

Create levels, for example Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Different rewards can be established at each level.

Why Gamification Works

Gamification works because it motivates employees to embrace CRM as a tool to facilitate their daily work. People like to play and compete in games. Gamification to CRM systems does just that. The more badges and points that a user has, this user is perceived as the guru of the CRM system. This user becomes the go-to person. Gamification creates that award system to recognize a person for their achievements

Having accurate data entered in a timely manner is crucial to a company’s CRM system. The CRM system is a key tool to facilitate decisions for customers. Without good data, effective decisions cannot be made.

Gamification is one tactic to ensuring that the necessary data is entered and is an effective means to motivate users by rewarding and encouraging specific behaviors to generate sales success.

Gamification takes advantage of human nature such as the desire to be acknowledged and rewarded for achievements. It plays on an individual’s competitive side by motivating them to try and be the best.

Hurrah! and Motivation Engine are software programs to help sales managers effectively use gamification within their companies to encourage effective data entry and the best behaviors to achieve sales success.

The Dallas Cowboys hold several sporting honors, including being the only NFL team to record 20 straight winning seasons.

The Cowboys have a robust sales department that had already been using a CRM since 2007 to track and log sales, but they were lacking a reporting tool.

After seeing the way the Hurrah! system’s Big Event alerts worked when sales were recorded, the CRM management team got excited—and knew that if it attracted their attention, it would do the same for their sales reps!

It is well known that monitoring operations based on “Activity and Results” KPI’s is essential for any Call Center or Telemarketing team. In the end, choosing those vital metrics and monitoring them, is what makes them succeed or not.

Some time ago, this important procedure was done poorly with a delay in showing reports, sometimes waiting weeks or even months. Nowadays the cutting edge call centers can monitor their key metrics in real time, allowing faster interaction and instant feedback. This finally streamlines their operations and improves the motivation of the people involved.

A variety of leaderboards and reporting solutions are available in the market, but the ones that actually work are the ones able to show instant updates automatically. Usually they are directly connected to the original data sources: such as CRM Systems, Data Warehouses, Sales Datamarts, Phone Systems, etc.

Non-real time solutions

There are also some solutions (even with a fancy front end) that require in-between files such as Excel spreadsheets or .txt files. We call that type of technology: a “non-real time” solution.

These types of tools are usually much easier to configure and they can start operating in a matter of minutes, however there are some important disadvantages:

1) Someone is required to manually update the Excel/txt files, increasing the risk of mistakes or errors that may lead to unwanted actions… What happen if that person has a day-off at work?

2) It represents an additional non insignificant cost. Let’s suppose the person needs 15 minutes 4 times a day to upload this data. He will be wasting 1 productive hour a day in this particular task. Considering an average cost/time of $30 an hour per person….in a month the investment will be $600, which means $7.200 by year.

3) In Call Centers and Telemarketing, the operations are so intense that measuring the streamline of the business must be done more often. If we use a Monitor/Leaderboard system updated by hand, an employee would have to do this tedious task at least 8 to 10 times a day resulting in personal fatigue and discouragement.

4) Tracking live scores make people feel more excited, no instant feedback is possible using Excel files. We prefer to celebrate specific outstanding actions (or results) at the same moment they occur.For instance if someone calls 50 clients in a week or closes a $50k deal, a REAL TIME solution catches the event and shares the action with everybody at the same moment the person accomplishes the goal.There is a huge difference between having that information LIVE, than waiting 24 hours until the data can be refreshed by someone editing an Excel file. Something similar happens if someone wins 2 or 3 positions in a leaderboard or if someone climbs to the 1st position. People want to see the changes in the metrics and in the leaderboard immediately, right at the moment it happens.

Leaderboard/Reporting Solutions help companies to track KPI’s and make them visible for everybody. They also aid companies to design tournaments and contests among their people invoking an intense sense of competition and self-improvement.

But… which group of Reporting/Leaderboard solutions is less risky and cheaper? Which one represents a more powerful solution to motivate teams?

Those that, even being easier to deploy, require in-between files updated by people? Or those that take the data directly from the source showing it clearly to anyone in the office?

Alejandro Morales
CEO CRMGamified

https://crmgamified.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/mashup-mockup-sin-sony.png20002500CRMGamified Staffhttps://crmgamified.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/logo.svgCRMGamified Staff2015-12-07 12:25:452015-12-10 12:51:42Tired of updating leaderboards manually? Welcome to the new era of Real Time Leaderboards!

About Us

Founded in 2011, and having presence in the US, Canada and Latin America, CRMGamified® provides modern technology to help companies improve sales and service performance by leveraging gamification.

We offer a metrics-driven approach and CRM add-ons to promote behaviors that lead to substantial revenue growth, increased employee engagement, and improved productivity of outbound teams across the globe.